I plan to send the below mail to [email protected]. What do
you think?
Hello,
There's a project in Incubator called FreeMarker, with these Maven
coordinates:
<groupId>org.freemarker</groupId>
<artifactId>freemarker</artifactId>
<version>2.3.25-incubating</version>
It's org.freemarker because it was like that for a decade or so,
before attempting incubation. There's a plan for a non-BC line that
can switch to org.apache, but that's irrelevant now.
The "-incubating" in the Maven version is confusing for the users, as
it looks as the version number of an ustable release. For those not
working in the Java ecosystem, note that users will usually just grab
the latest version from the Maven Central Repo based on the version
string, without looking at the project home page, at least if it's
only a 3rd version number change. (See [*] if you care about some more
clues.)
So, as the groupId doesn't contain org.apache, is there any chance
that instead of putting "-incubating" into the Maven POM "version", we
change the Maven POM "name" from "Apache FreeMarker" to "Apache
FreeMarker (incubating)"? We would leave the version number as
2.x.x-incubating everywhere else, like in the file names of the
releases downloadable from apache.org, in the documentation, etc. I
believe this change would be beneficial for the users.
*: It certainly doesn't help that http://mvnrepository.com
automatically marks these incubating versions with red (~ alpha).
Anyway, on the same place 2.3.23, the last non-Apache release from
1.5 years ago, has suspiciously high usage compared to the two
"-incubating" releases following it. Spring has also stuck at
2.3.23, which is strange.
--
Thanks,
Daniel Dekany
